The Dark Horse Project IV

dw, i'm probably doing more of victini first, but i'll still try to destroy you when the time comes(;

i like your team, but i'd definitely want to fit rapid spin on tentacruel somewhere. most probably in place of toxic since toed has it, but substitute / protect also seems a little redundant, usually it's just one or the other imo.

@ master of the six kings i don't really think either gene or terra really poses a threat to him. you'd be surprised at how well lapras takes unboosted t-bolts from genesect, and lando-t/defensive tentacruel deal with terra quite well; he just has to play smart with lando and keep it alive.

Genesect was dealt with primarily by forcing it to switch into moves (eg. Latias DM) and using that and rocks to wear it down. I'm actually not sure I saw any scarfers that weren't Genesect AND weren't weak to Ice Shard... the damn bug is so popular it's usurped the role on tons of teams - I only saw Scarf Mence, Landorus(-T), Rotom-W and Haxorus. The former two dislike Ice Shard intensely, and neither can break Landorus solo either, apart from a predictive HP Ice (I would generally use Toed for Landorus-I). Haxorus also loses to Landorus, although I would often prefer Landorus->Politoed so I could conserve the former's HP. Generally I would have to play around Rotom - Latias doesn't really care about its moves which is nice, so once I got a Scald burn or Toxic on it I could stall it out pretty easily. Having 2 Protects is very helpful for this, although I sometimes wished I had it on Landorus too haha.

If I had fought a Scarf Terrakion, I would probably have relied on the combination of Landorus, Tentacruel, Latias and Politoed to beat it, depending on how much health they variously had left. Any other set is less threatening because Jolteon can easily revenge it provided rain is up. Genesect would probably have been a lot more dangerous to the team if I didn't have Jolteon - Latias isn't always enough to kill it and Ebelt coverage moves would shred through the rest of the team. I believe Lapras can tank a +1 Thunderbolt if Rocks are not up, although Waterfall does not OHKO. Tentacruel is probably in the same boat, although it is pretty rare for it to be at 100% because I make use of its resistances a lot. I definately agree with the sentiment that Landorus has to be played smartly, because losing intimidate before getting some solid damage on enemy sweepers is a big setback.

The main threat to the team was Latios, in my experience. Without a Steel, I had to Poison/Burn it and then variously switch around absorbing Meteors with Tentacruel and to a lesser extent Lapras. It would end up doing a lot of damage (think 1-2 kills) every time I fought it, despite Jolteon being an excellent answer once it was down to about 65%. I think pretty much every game I lost was to either Latios or a team with both Hippowdon and Tyranitar - inclusing one incredibly frustrating game in which a Latios survived Signal Beam with 2% of its health and proceeded to, I kid you not, sweep me with CM Luster Purge :(.

Lol, he's technically right since there's no hard deviation requirement (we're just required to be in the appropriate top XXX); however I agree that it's pointless to grant Bronze rank for a stint like that, just after a ladder reset, and I suggest adding a fixed deviation requirement in addition to the existing ones, to solve the problem.

The placement on the ladder really doesn't matter though, since Glicko determines rank. Even at number 5 he is no where near anyone else who has top 5'ed the ladder, which i think is an indication that the system is working as is.

hmm that is definitely weird. due to the ladder reset, has the 80 dev requirement for top 100 on ladder lifted? if that's the case we should definitely implement a dev cutoff of our own, but for now i think we can just wait and let things stabilize a bit

The deviation requirement applies only when there are enough plays to populate a full leaderboard. In tiers like Hackmons which see very few players, provisional alts still saw the leaderboard right before the reset. As soon as more people start laddering the provisional accounts will get pushed down and off to make way for those that are not provisional.

i was waiting for someone to steal deoxys-D from eranu =P in terms of being "easy" to ladder with, it's probably one of the easiest dark horses available right now, so anyone could chase after it. good stuff, lady alex! now let's see if eranu will steal it back from you

Also, greyed accounts on the leaderboard are not ineligible for HoF; one must lower their deviation to have their names show up in black. Specifically, you need a deviation of 80 to enter Dark Horse's Hall of Fame!

also, for fun, here are some stats: on the leaderboard of total HoFed alts, lady alex is in the lead with a whopping FIVE complete dark horse runs, followed by tropious with 4. molk and master of the six kings are tied behind at 3 alts each